I will share new products that I find to help our families affected with Autism and news stories that I find interesting.

Monday, August 26, 2013

More Links Seen Between Autism, ADHD

Study found 1 in 5 kids with attention disorder also had autistic-type traits

Kids with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are 20
times more likely to exhibit some traits of autism than children without
ADHD, according to a new study.

One of every five ADHD kids in the study exhibited signs of
autism such as slow language development, difficulty interacting with
others and problems with emotional control, said study co-author Dr.
Joseph Biederman, director of the pediatric psychopharmacology unit at
Massachusetts General Hospital.

These kids also showed problems
with "executive function," or the ability to plan, organize and
conceptualize future action, said Biederman, a professor of psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School.
Fewer than 1 percent of kids in the
non-ADHD comparison group exhibited any traits linked to autism,
according to the study appearing in the September issue of Pediatrics.

"These
children are not having the full diagnosis of autism, but they have
symptoms of autism," Biederman said. "It may be important to screen
children with ADHD for autistic traits because they may need more
support, particularly in the educational and interpersonal domains."

Previous
studies of children with autism have found that many also have severe
ADHD symptoms. This is one of the first studies to turn the tables and
see if the reverse is true, said Dr. Alice Mao, an associate professor
of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. She was not involved with
the study.

"Generally, autistic kids with ADHD are challenging to
treat because they don't respond well to ADHD medications," Mao said.
"You have to treat the autism symptoms and then treat the ADHD. The
conclusion would be that perhaps we should screen these ADHD kids who
are not doing well on traditional ADHD treatments to see if they have
comorbid autism traits."

The study included 242 kids aged 6 to 18
with ADHD as well as a 227-member "control" group of kids without ADHD.
The children were drawn from an existing large-scale sample pool that
excluded any kids who had been diagnosed with autism.